Wednesday, April 2, 2008

It's Not Just a Job......

This week at my day job, I got to climb water towers. These aren't the little ones either. I climbed our biggest tower on Monday (it is the one at 108th and Renner...you can see it from K10 and I-435). It is the biggest one in the district and known as "The Big Johnson." This was an adventure. These towers are climbed through the inside and you have a special harness that supposedly keeps you from plummeting to your death....I took their word on it and did not experiment to find out how well they worked. I was white knuckling the ladder all the way up. Experienced climbers I am told will rest by taking their hands off the ladder and leaning back, allowing the harness to completely keep them on the ladder.....no way in hell was that happening. I climbed that tower on Monday and did not use gloves...my hands felt like they had been sand blasted when I was done...so no climbing on Tuesday......Wednesday, however was another story. I had to go out and climb the second largest tower in the district out at 199th and Lackman....this one known as "The Little Johnson."

Having completed a successful climb on Monday, I now regarded myself as an old pro and was confident enough that I would live through it, that I took some pictures. The inside of the tower is pictured below and you can see part of the climb up the ladder. I made it to the first perch, which is a small platform and sat there for 20 seconds to catch my breath....then on up until you reach the cat-walk, which is at the base of the actual tank (you can see a door to nowhere, just below the "O" in the above picture). Then you get to walk to the center of the tube and reattach to another ladder and continue on up (the second stretch is not visible in the picture).

One of the engineers took some picture of me as I was climbing so hopefully I get those and post them later....It was a blast...